Starcity

Release Date: June 2012

Publisher: 6waves

Developer: dbros

Genre: Simulation

Sponsor:

StarCity is a Facebook city-building game developed by South Korea-based dbros and published by 6Waves. In the game, your goal is to thrive your city by training stars, roll out performance and run business with your Facebook friends.

Review:

There have been so many games casting players in representing athletes that few ideas could blow our mind any more in such games. Maybe it’s time to have our hands in an instantly lucrative industry – the show business.
You will have a star whose debut kicks off at the street live from the get-go. Collect incomes after performances and use that money to sign contracts with more singers and actors, build music performance stages, various film sets, and other event centers, and add other facilities, such as café and bunkhouses to attract and accommodate tourists. You are to create a star city of your own.

Most of the stars are actual stars from South Korea while others are just animated figures. Click any event center, choose a star, and select the performance type. Each kind of performance lasts for a different period of time, ranging from 1 min 30 sec to hours. Different shows reward you with different items, experience points, and coins. The stuffs, including albums, sunglasses, high heels, certificates, and all the varied items you collect from those performances are necessary when it comes to upgrading your stars and contracting with new ones.

Businesses like Café, Flower Kiosk, Chinese Restaurant and Papa’s Pizza don’t provide coins automatically as hostels, bunkhouses and bungalows do. You have to deliver goods to them so that they can continue serving customers. The goods can be obtained by hiring motorbikes, cargo vans, or even Limousines in parking lots. And to store excessive goods, you must build terminals.

Initially, level up is much too easy. You can get one upgrade after completing each task actually. Your city witnesses an explosive growth. You don’t have to worry about the energy since level ups are not far between and before you know it, you will get a full recovery of energy with an upgrade. Nonetheless, after reaching level 11, it is a different story. Naturally, you can collect revenues from this building, deliver goods to that facility, and even build a new event center. Believe it or not, that’s exactly how problems arise. With so many buildings out there, you can easily run out of energy. And it is often the case that all the facilities are ready for revenue collection but I have no energy to cover that. It feels awful when I cannot claim all that money.

But energy issue isn’t the one that pisses me off. Apparently, the tasks are not arranged reasonably enough. After having playing the game for quite a while, I was asked to enable the full screen mode. Done that a million years ago, OK? There was a time when I ran out of energy and decided to visit all my friends and the BigBoss, which is the exemplary character of this game, and helped in their cities. One or two hours later, a new quest demands that I should visit BigBoss’s city and help her five times. Having used up all the energy dedicated to helping in her city, I cannot deal with that until tomorrow. If those are due to my spontaneous actions, what would you feel if you are tasked with building a terminal right after building one to store extra goods? I was upset and careful afterwards and tried my best to do whatever I was asked to do. And then tasks begin to instruct me to arrange performances at event centers that I never have. For God’s sake, at least keep at a consistent style! Is that so difficult to achieve?

Also there are several structures that one would never complete unless they are willing to pay or their friends would help. For instance, the Starcity Casino, which is pretty much the reason I stick to the game until I reach level 15, requires 5 cards, 5 roulettes, 5 dices, 5 green chips, 3 red chips, 3 blue chips, 3 purple chips, and 3 black chips, all of which need friends’ help or your money.

Not that the game sucks. It’s still brilliant in the rich content that makes one feel like they are actually running entertainment businesses.